Art of Supply

"AI will never replace that human judgment. And the number one reason for that is responsibility." — Elisar Nurmagambet, Co-Founder and CEO, Tesari AI
When Meta acquired the Chinese AI agent startup Manus for roughly $2 Billion, the due diligence looked clean.  
Four months later, China's government blocked the deal and ordered it unwound. 
Elisar Nurmagambet, Co-Founder and CEO of Tesari AI, and Brian Andersen, their Vice President of National Security Applications, join Kelly Barner to explain why the compliance model most companies still run on wasn't built for this moment, and why some of the sharpest early-warning signals in global trade never show up in a standard database at all.
 In this episode Elissar and Brian discuss:
- Why "checkbox compliance" has become a board-level, CEO-level liability
- What a government-licensed social media influencer in China revealed about the Meta-Manus deal, months before it collapsed
- Why "substance over form" now determines whose jurisdiction your supply chain falls under, regardless of where an entity is legally registered
- The investigative mindset that supply chain professionals have to develop to succeed in today's challenging conditions
 
Links:
Elisar Nurmagambet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elissarn/ 
Brian Andersen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tbrianandersen/ 
Tesari AI: https://www.tesari.ai 
National Security Starts in the Supply Chain (AOS, Ep 211): https://artofprocurement.com/blog/supply-national-security-starts-in-the-supply-chain 
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

"Just-in-time inventory is great when it's working, but when it stops working, it's a huge disaster because you don't have material staged and you don't have strategic reserves." — Michael Murray, Senior Director of Global Supply Chain, DSV Inventory Management Solutions
For most of the 2000s, the mandate in manufacturing was lean: hold less, order just-in-time, and keep working capital off the balance sheet. Then came a string of shocks: COVID, the Suez Canal blockage, and a global chip shortage. 
All of a sudden, just-in-time started looking more like just-in-trouble. Companies swung hard toward just-in-case, stockpiling inventory as insurance against the next disruption.
Michael Murray, Senior Director of Global Supply Chain at DSV Inventory Management Solutions, isn't ready to declare just-in-time dead. 
In this episode of Art of Supply, Michael joins Kelly Barner to talk about the cost challenges that can result when inventory is managed reactively: 
- Why the pendulum keeps swinging between just-in-time and just-in-case
- Why trade policy is becoming a bigger driver of inventory strategy than COVID ever was
- How a consolidated VMI model changes the math for OEMs, and why suppliers may be harder to convince than CFOs
 
Links:
Michael Murray on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mp-murray/ 
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

Earlier this month, thousands of people descended on a small orchard in California's Central Valley to receive free nectarines.
The crowds became so large that the California Highway Patrol temporarily shut the event down because of traffic and safety concerns.
At first glance, it looked like a feel-good story—a farmer sharing his harvest with the community. But that wasn't the whole story.
Third-generation farmer Cesar Mora says he gave away more than 100,000 pounds of nectarines because he couldn't sell them. The fruit wasn't spoiled. There wasn't a bumper crop that overwhelmed demand. The giveaway stemmed from a legal dispute over who controls the right to market and sell a specific variety of nectarine.
This story raises questions about intellectual property, exclusive supply agreements, and market access. It also demonstrates that sometimes the biggest supply chain constraint isn't producing something, it's having permission to sell it.
In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers:
- How proprietary fruit varieties became valuable intellectual property.
- Why one California farmer says he had no choice but to give away his crop.
- The legal dispute over contracts, exclusivity, and commercialization rights.
 
Links:
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

Imagine seeing one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world almost empty, before realizing that it isn't empty at all. The ships are still there, but the data has disappeared.
Analysts monitoring the Strait of Hormuz have watched vessels vanish only to reappear someplace else hours later. Others appear to be sailing across inland airports or drifting through the Iranian desert. 
The Automatic Identification System (AIS) has quietly become part of the information infrastructure that global trade depends on. 
So what happens when one of the world's most trusted sources of maritime information can no longer be accepted at face value?
In this episode of Art of Supply, Kelly Barner breaks down why the tracking system the entire shipping industry runs on can no longer be trusted and who's actually exposed:
- Why self-reporting makes AIS, the backbone of global ship tracking, scalable and vulnerable to manipulation
 - The difference between the information provided by AIS and other systems like radar and GPS
 - Why insurers, commodity traders, and sanctions regulators are all pricing risk off data that may be fictional
 
Links:
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

Cross-border payments have long been a game of advantages. Large enterprises get fast settlement, cheap foreign exchange rates, and sophisticated treasury tools, while mid-market companies are left to piece together workarounds through regional banks and costly third-party providers. 
Stablecoin infrastructure is changing that equation, offering businesses of all sizes access to the same financial rails that were once reserved for the Fortune 500. The result is faster payments, lower costs, and smarter capital management across global supply chains.
Tanner Taddeo is the co-founder and CEO of Stable Sea, a fintech platform helping mid-market businesses move money across borders using stablecoin-based infrastructure. His background spans humanitarian finance, investment banking across Europe and South Asia, the Gates Foundation, and fintech roles at Plaid and Block, all with a consistent focus on expanding financial access for underserved businesses and communities.
In this episode of Art of Supply, Tanner and Kelly Barner discuss:
- What stablecoins are and why they behave nothing like the volatile cryptocurrencies most people are familiar with
- Why mid-market companies have been left behind by the traditional banking system when it comes to global payments and treasury management 
- The supplier relationship advantage of faster, cheaper cross-border settlement 
- The next frontier in stablecoin adoption, which will turn payment liabilities into yield-generating assets 
Links:
Tanner Taddeo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanner-taddeo-9b64562a/ 
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe